Pro Chefs Blind Taste Test Every Vanilla Ice Cream

[Narrator] We've gathered three ice cream experts

to blind taste test

every vanilla ice cream we could get our hands on,

to see which ones meet their standards.

[lighthearted music]

[tub thudding]

Häagen-Dazs Vanilla.

The color is like a super pale yellow,

so not a lot of egg yolk.

That's not

the most aesthetically vanilla-looking ice cream

I've ever seen.

No vanilla seeds

Potentially, this isn't, like, the most premium ice cream.

So when it comes to vanilla ice cream,

there's just a couple of things that I'm looking for.

There should be a good vanilla quality.

Seeing those flecks of a real vanilla bean,

that to me indicates something more premium.

You should be able to smell it.

When it comes to dairy-

You want it to be rich.

Full fat.

Obviously I'm looking for a great texture,

A smooth, even melt on the tongue.

It should melt in your mouth quite fast,

and that will deliver flavor.

And finally, I am looking for a balanced sweetness.

That's what my kids probably think

is the best part about ice cream.

The vanilla here fades very quickly.

It's hardly there at all.

I don't think this is real vanilla.

As far as richness goes, it's pretty thin there as well.

It melts so quickly on the tongue.

It feels like it's really milky

as opposed to creamy.

Texturally, it's really not bringing a lot to the table.

It's definitely got some ice crystals in there.

Doesn't really have that, like, luxurious velvety mouth feel

that I'm looking for.

The sweetness is pretty right on.

It feels like the amount of sugar you would need

to eat an entire two scoops

and not feel like you ate a pound of sugar.

All right, oh, my God. Wow

Häagen-Dazs, you can do better.

Häagen-Dazs was born right here in New York City,

in the Bronx.

They made up the name, and they wanted it to sound European,

because that at the time signified, like, high-end luxury.

Five ingredients.

That's really nice to see.

There's no stabilizers.

Which means that the yolk that you can see acts as that.

It's a pretty straightforward product.

The first ingredient here is cream.

That's good, we want that.

But the second ingredient is skim milk.

And that to me

is just making it feel way too light

and almost like watery on the mouth.

Once you look into the container,

you can see that it has like that hint of yellow in it,

which correlates to the presence of yolk.

So they're using the lecithin from the egg yolks

as a natural stabilizer,

which in my eyes is a premium trait.

That would be a French style ice cream.

There are two types of ice cream.

There's French style and there's Philadelphia style.

Häagen-Dazs is French style, which contains yolk.

Essentially you're making a custard

before you're freezing it.

Philadelphia style doesn't have any eggs.

One's not better than the other, by any means.

I like the richness.

I like the flavor that egg yolks provide.

But they also have a flavor.

The ice cream itself,

the flavor you're trying to achieve

has to be able to stand up to the egg yolks

and kind of overcome the egg yolk.

High level-looking ice cream.

We're talking about fat, sugar, water, and air.

It's really important to balance those four things.

Häagen-Dazs has let me down a little bit here.

Me and Häagen-Dazs have a lot to get through.

This might be in my therapy session this week.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Breyers Natural Vanilla.

I'm seeing some flecks of vanilla,

which makes me very happy.

It looks more vanilla than Häagen-Dazs.

Definitely a shade of white.

So I'm not seeing a lot of that egg yolk custardiness

that we could have in there.

It's got that same one dimensional vanilla.

It disappears immediately.

I personally would want, like, a little more fat in there.

It's rich, but it's not necessarily dairy.

I'm not getting ice crystals, so I really like that.

Texture is light and very aerated.

There are literally bubbles, like, popping out.

That tells me there's more air pumped into it,

which is known as overrun in the ice cream making process.

It does enhance some flavors.

Vanilla, probably not so much.

But it also enhances the bottom line,

like, the profit margin.

Essentially they're selling you air.

Not incredibly sweet, actually.

I could probably have, like, two scoops

and not feel like I'm, like, completely done.

If I were to guess, I'd say a less expensive brand,

something that's widely available.

Breyers.

Breyers.

Breyers.

Oh. Ah.

Natural vanilla, Breyers, yes.

So this is a Philadelphia style ice cream, no yolk.

It's not as fatty.

Super dairy forward on the tongue

and a little lighter and airier.

Eggs are also a stabilizer.

The natural lecithin in egg yolks

does a lot of the work for you.

Problem being is egg yolks are expensive.

To keep its structure, the Philadelphia style ice cream

uses tara gum, in the case of Breyers specifically.

And with that gum,

you're able to not get that icy mouth feel.

You're also able to not let it, like, melt super quickly.

The gum is basically free.

So, wow, they didn't really spend a lot of money

on anything in this thing.

Well, that's why they're a very wealthy company.

[Orlando] Natural flavor means

that it's not synthetic in origin.

Sometimes you'll see vanilla in an ingredient list,

and that is manufactured vanilla flavor,

much less complex than a real vanilla bean

and very cost effective.

You can get away with a lot if you write natural flavors.

That said, it does have some specks in it,

so probably some vanilla.

We don't know.

It's a very solid supermarket brand.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Van Leeuwen Vanilla Bean Ice Cream.

This one's very yellow.

[Caroline] Definitely has some egg in it.

[Orlando] Here you can see specks.

This is looking like a little more premium.

This vanilla flavor's really good.

It's still lingering on my tongue.

It makes me wanna go back for more.

It's rich, but the fat kind of, like, melts out,

which is characteristic of butter fat.

Texture is great.

It's smooth.

It doesn't feel like there's a lot of air in it

and it's leaning towards like a French vanilla style.

It's very custardy, actually,

so the color might really be coming from egg.

The sweetness on this one is absolutely perfect.

It has a bit of salt to it too.

It helps all of the other flavors come out.

Kind of like makes you salivate.

It's just, like, a well-made ice cream.

Ah! Oh.

It's Van Leeuwen.

This is a New York brand.

They did a great job.

It is a French style ice cream.

Sea salt, look at that.

It just makes it pop.

They do write that it's vanilla extract and vanilla bean.

They just sort of give different notes of the vanilla.

The vanilla extract

is kind of like the anchoring flavor, if you will.

That baseline of like,

this is what vanilla should taste like.

When you combine it with the vanilla bean,

you get those other hundreds of flavor profiles

that the vanilla bean brings.

And you can use a lot less of it

because you've faked the funk on the extract.

This is how you make small margins and people happy.

Happy with this one.

That is a delicious ice cream.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Edy's Vanilla.

No specks.

Pale yellow color, so that tells me

there might be some egg yolk in there, which is nice.

Very soft.

This is loaded with stabilizers.

Oh, boy, that's unpleasant.

The vanilla is very subtle.

Fades fairly quickly.

I don't even get richness.

There's something going on with the fat

from just how it lingers.

Really nice texture, super smooth.

It's definitely the sweetest I've had so far.

You can't even discern the dairy.

It's so stabilized that nothing can melt on your tongue,

so it goes down your throat

before you even have a chance to decipher

what it tastes like.

I want this to be like a big old box.

Ah.

Edy's.

I can't believe what I put in my own body just now.

On the East Coast, it's called Edy's.

On the West Coast, it's called Dreyer's.

[Sam] Frozen dairy dessert.

Technically not ice cream.

According to the FDA,

if an ice cream has less than 10% dairy fat,

you cannot call it ice cream legally.

14 is like, starts getting up near like the premium.

[Orlando] First ingredient is skim milk.

No fat, so you have to compensate for that.

Skim milk also has high water content,

so you really need some stabilizers in there

to prevent ice crystals forming and help it freeze.

The second ingredient is corn syrup,

which I could have told you that.

Corn syrup is an invert sugar.

Invert sugars are sugars that are liquids.

They create very smooth textures.

They don't like to freeze.

There's so many ways to screw up ice cream.

Why did I get into the ice cream business?

Not my go-to.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Ben & Jerry's Vanilla.

[Caroline] This is a lovely, smooth scoop.

Air.

Again, some specks.

Nice vanilla flavor.

I wouldn't mind a little more.

This is a lower fat percentage,

which I'm getting from the mouthfeel.

Not a lot of yolk, if at all.

The texture on here, very smooth, no ice crystals.

Melts very quickly.

If I were to guess, not necessarily a lot of stabilizers.

Sweetness wise, it's pretty balanced.

It's not super sweet.

No way, I'm so sad. Ah.

It's Ben & Jerry's.

It's got all the stuff it's supposed to have.

Why does it taste like that?

Skim milk to me just doesn't really make sense in there.

I think for a manufacturer, it makes sense.

It's a cheap ingredient.

But then you have to compensate with all this other stuff.

There's two sugars in it, liquid sugar.

Liquid sugar means invert sugar.

Feels very smooth because it has that more aggressive

and higher amount of sugar.

Sugar doesn't like to freeze,

so it helps prevent ice crystals

from forming and gives you quite a smooth ice cream.

There's water in here, which feels weird.

It's adding, like, some volume to it

without adding cost.

I think it's a lot sweeter than I remember it.

If you, like, went across America

and asked people what their favorite ice cream is,

I think that a lot of people would say Ben & Jerry's.

This is so bad.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Turkey Hill Original Vanilla.

Nice and thick, very dense.

I can smell vanilla, or vanillin, from a frozen form,

so that means that it definitely has

that, like, alcohol component to it

that's literally evaporating into the atmosphere.

The vanilla disappears immediately.

Maybe they forgot vanilla.

The dairy's actually not terrible.

It's kind of actually relatively rich.

Texture is okay.

It's got a good bite.

It's not melting.

It's not, like, super icy.

The sweetness is low.

It has, like, a yellowish tinge.

It tells me there's probably egg yolk in it,

but it doesn't taste super fatty.

This one's giving me the Turkey.

That's Turkey. Ha.

Turkey Hill.

Premium quality ice cream.

When it says premium, that means higher milk fat

and higher milk solids.

There's no egg in it.

I was wrong.

And again, it's got some food dyes in it.

Annatto is a seed.

It grows in a pod almost like chestnuts do.

It's red in its form.

When you infuse it into things,

you get kind of a yellowish color.

That and caramel color

is what's giving this the faux yolk situation.

It really doesn't have a flavor

and it's not obviously adding anything to the texture.

Interesting.

They have engineered something

that is a really good dupe

for a very high fat premium ice cream.

Not my fave.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Talenti Gelato Madagascan Vanilla Bean.

This one is interesting.

It's almost translucent.

It does have specks of, quote, unquote, vanilla bean.

Nice and thick, hangs on the spoon.

Hopefully that means delicious fat and not stabilizers,

but let's see.

The vanilla in here is intense,

not necessarily in a bad way.

Like, it gives you first and lingering flavor,

so vanilla extract and vanilla bean potentially.

I'm at a loss on this one.

It doesn't have that richness.

It's not pleasant.

It's definitely got, like, a nuttiness to it.

It's not French style.

If it had some egg yolks, it might have a better texture.

Icier than any of the other ones so far.

Just a really poorly homogenized product.

I hate being so critical, but I'm getting really good at it.

A little too sweet for me.

Ah. That makes sense.

All right.

Talenti.

Their branding was fantastic.

This is the only one that's packaged like this,

where you can see the ice cream

and you can really see the vanilla bean.

[Orlando] It's gelato.

Gelato is always gonna be lower fat content

than ice cream.

It also generally doesn't have egg yolks.

Mostly milk and not cream.

It's a slower-churned, slower-frozen product.

A little more air worked into it.

Typically, gelato is served slightly warmer

than traditional ice cream is.

It's almost at the range of soft served.

It also says here lemon peel.

Italian product.

Lemon is a big thing in Sicily.

The essential oils from the lemon

probably can enhance the vanilla.

There is real sugar in here,

but then you also have the dextrose.

Dextrose has almost twice the effect of, like, antifreeze,

like, drawing water and not letting it form crystals.

It's less sweet than granulated sugar.

A great thing to add to ice creams and gelatos

to make them smoother but less sweet at the same time.

Now that I know it's a gelato, I'm a little less critical.

Not as fatty and smooth as I would like,

but definitely, like, a really lovely flavor profile.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Trader Joe's French Vanilla.

It's yellowish.

It's very gummy.

No specks.

Feels dense and smooth.

It's good.

Oh, wow, that's good.

The vanilla flavor's really nice

even though it doesn't have the aroma.

Wouldn't necessarily call this,

like, high quality vanilla, sort of artificial.

If it is imitation, they've used a very good one.

It's got a richness.

It's creamy, it's probably got eggs in it.

It's super smooth.

texturally, they're not doing a terrible job.

Definitely some yolk in the base.

Really dense, and creamy, and fatty.

The mouth feel is great.

It's got a nice sweetness.

I think it's going for premium ice cream feel

without necessarily being premium ice cream.

Ah.

Trader Joe's French Vanilla,

[Orlando] Super premium ice cream.

Well done, Trader Joe's.

Cream is up first, milk, great, egg yolks.

Feels like a more premium ice cream, which it says.

I did not know this was super premium.

So the difference between premium

and super premium is fat.

It's quite fatty, [chuckles] which I like.

It's not super vanilla forward.

I wouldn't have it if I was going for, like, vanilla

as the flavor of the main thing,

but a good sweet cream ice cream.

I haven't tried Trader Joe's before

and I think it's quite good.

My wife likes them.

I don't like standing in lines.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Jeni's Honey Vanilla Bean.

This one looks like vanilla ice cream.

[Caroline] I can see the flecks all over.

We like to see that.

It does have a good amount of stabilizer.

Not entirely a bad thing.

Oh, yeah.

It's tasty.

Very vanilla forward.

The vanilla beans, it seems real.

It's rich.

Really smooth and velvety.

It's pretty high on the sweet level.

It's a little too sweet for me.

There might be a combination of, like, sugar

and invert sugar in there.

That's a good one.

This one's good.

This one's checking a lot of the boxes.

[Caroline gasping]

Jeni's.

Honey vanilla bean.

Honey, that's a great addition.

So you can taste like a bit of the acidity that honey has.

It's an invert sugar.

One way of thinking of inverted sugars

is what we call the folded chair analogy.

So the chair is the same chair

whether it's folded or unfolded,

but by folding it you're able to fit more chairs

into the same space.

Sucrose or granulated sugar is that open chair.

Invert sugar is that folded chair that you can like fit,

it's the same chair.

It's made out of the same stuff.

It's just formed differently.

It prevents crystallization.

So for Philadelphia style ice creams,

it's very convenient to, like, remove crystal formation

using a stronger sugar.

So that's also helping it be, like, really smooth.

It's also a little sweeter.

What honey has also

is like a really unique flavor profile.

So tapioca syrup

would be kind of like a gum solution, you know?

It's like tapioca is a starch

and it kind of brings that stabilizing effect

to the product,

so it doesn't have to use any real stabilizers,

which is pretty pretty badass.

Vanilla bean specks

and shortly before vanilla extract,

you're immediately thinking like,

Oh, this ice cream

is, like, premium, premium, premium quality,

because the vanilla specks are, like, in a high amount.

I think this is my favorite so far.

[tub thudding]

Halo Top Vanilla Bean.

This one looks like it was injected with air.

It looks almost, like, foamy.

Unique, funny texture.

It doesn't weigh a lot,

so maybe on the low calorie side, high air side.

I don't, no.

I'm not sure what this is exactly.

This is void of flavor.

You see the specks, but you don't get, like, vanilla.

This is bizarro.

Very chemically aftertaste.

I can't imagine that any kind of cream

is on the list of ingredients.

It's not very rich,

but that might just be the amount of air

that you have per spoonful.

It's melting very fast.

It's got a graininess to it, a little iciness,

something very unnatural about it.

Halo Top comes to mind.

Is this [indistinct]?

Ha.

Halo Top.

Nailed it.

Lower in calories, lower in fat.

I could tell there was something suspicious going on here.

They call it light ice cream.

I don't know if there's a window

below that 10% fat content

where you can call yourself light ice cream.

That's something new to me.

Good source of protein,

which is probably why it's also, like, elastic.

Yuck.

The first sugar mentioned is erythritol,

so that's an alcohol sugar.

Like dextrose, it's less sweet than granulated sugar

but even stronger than dextrose in its texture effect,

like, in its antifreeze.

And that's why it's, like, melting

but still, like, almost like holding shape

with all the gums.

And it also has, like, a chemical aftertaste.

Stevia leaf, which always to me

has like a very sort of distinct kind of chemically taste.

When you add these other sugars,

the caloric weight is probably lower.

I guess it has to be.

There may be a good alternative

for people that have diabetes or any other condition

that needs to circumvent calories for.

I wouldn't eat this.

I mean, the whole point of ice cream is decadence, right?

Like, no, I just wanna eat ice cream.

Just give me my ice cream.

I'll eat the good ice cream and run after it.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Alec's Tahitian Vanilla Bean.

I'm seeing some specks.

Subtle vanilla aroma.

Dairy melts immediately, so not a lot of protein,

not a lot of stabilizers.

The first icy one, very icy.

Ice is water, so-

If it isn't stabilized in the right way,

homogenized or emulsified with fat.

The ice cream might separate

into its original, like, formula.

Everything kind of like goes by density.

So, like, fat at the top, water in the middle,

sugars at the bottom.

You can feel, like, crunchy bits as you're biting into it.

It's all ice.

There's a pretty nice vanilla flavor.

There's not a lot of fat in this ice cream.

It's not rich and creamy.

I almost feel like it's non-dairy

because of this like coconutty

or, like, nuttiness I'm getting.

The texture you're going for in ice cream.

Not quite creamy enough for me.

This feels like the right amount of sweetness.

Might be like an artificial sweetener

but not a potent one that keeps the ice cream smooth.

I think this is a brand that has low fat

and/or low sugar in its [indistinct].

I wanna say it's not like a super premium brand.

Ah.

Alec's, A2/A2 dairy.

The packaging is really cute.

Happy cows on there.

Tahitian vanilla bean.

Vanilla beans come from several places in the world.

Tahitian reads well.

It looks great on a label.

They're all expensive and they're all very hard to produce.

They're all premium.

It's got the real deal in there

plus Tahitian vanilla extract,

so kind of getting like all of the notes of that vanilla,

and I really like that flavor.

I mean, who doesn't wanna go to Tahiti, right?

Clean labels, not a lot of garbage,

which they've done a good job.

And it's made with A2 dairy.

Certain cows produce milk

that is less harsh on your stomach,

so people who are lactose intolerant

can sometimes tolerate A2.

Which is really nice

because everybody should be able to enjoy ice cream.

Texturally, it kind of is working uphill

with the lack of any kind of stabilization.

Too icy for me.

I wouldn't try to get it in a scoop and a cone

and try to get it out on a hot summer day

'cause it's not gonna last very long.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Friendly's Vanilla.

It is pale.

[Sam] Diabolical white ice cream.

My guess is there's no egg in here.

[Sam] Kind of looks like a really awesome,

like, lemon sorbet.

No vanilla whatsoever.

Like, I'm getting more artificial.

It's not creamy.

It doesn't taste very rich.

It's a really bad texture.

It's foamy.

It's almost like a marshmallow.

Whatever gum combination is in it

is making it very chewy.

Chewy ice cream, if you will.

It's a thing.

The sweetness is okay.

It just doesn't taste very premium.

I feel like there's a brand of sugar in here.

I don't guess, but a lower quality,

and, like, a more inexpensive one.

This is the biggest box of ice cream

we've seen yet, I think.

Aha.

Friendly's vanilla, scooping since 1935.

Very famous for the Conehead Sundae.

Premium ice cream.

So it meets the fat requirements.

[Sam] Sweet cream buttermilk.

Buttermilk is the byproduct of butter-making process,

so you've, like, pulled out all the good fats.

So it's not fatty.

But the third ingredient is corn syrup,

and that's after sugar.

So you're getting a very sweet,

like, very high sugar-containing scoop.

Bunch of stabilizers in here.

Guar gum, xanthan, and carrageenan.

The moment you see gum,

it does exactly what you think gum does.

It makes it elastic.

It'll help prevent melting.

It doesn't allow the water and the sugar

to kind of like bind fully

and kind of like start trickling down

the way ice cream does normally.

So gums are important for texture during transportation

or, like, just the freestyle cycles of every freezer.

They're all plant-based,

so they read creepier than they really are,

which has always kind of been a bummer.

But the flip side of it is that it makes it chewy

as a result, just like gum is.

This just has all stabilizers in it.

We also do want our ice cream to melt a little bit

because as it warms up, those flavors start to come out.

I think for a lot of people,

Friendly's is probably quite nostalgic,

but it's not the most, like, vanilla forward.

Definitely not vanilla.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] 365 by Whole Foods Vanilla.

This is yellow.

It's almost the color of the table.

I don't know if it's annatto or egg yolks.

We're about to find out.

It's fooled me, countless times today.

The vanilla's subtle.

I wouldn't mind a little more.

I don't taste vanilla.

It's definitely rich.

It's not overly creamy.

Texture wise, it's on the smooth side,

but it's very dense.

This buttery color could be egg yolks

and it's French style.

It feels like it has the richness,

so hopefully that's coming from the dairy

and not stabilizers.

It's not overly sweet.

It does have a really lovely sweetness.

This is a really nice scoop.

It can't be a Whole Foods.

Ah.

Yep.

365 Whole Foods Market Vanilla Ice Cream.

Annatto extract for color.

They tricked us.

No yolks, just milk ingredients.

I've never known annatto to be used

when you weren't trying to fool somebody.

Feels very interesting to be like hoodwinked

by commercial ice cream.

But the first two ingredients are whole milk and cream,

so it does have that fattiness, which is really nice.

Kind of middle of the road.

Back to the drawing board for this one.

Not great.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Adirondack Creamery Vanilla.

I like the look here.

We've got lots of flecks of vanilla bean.

Like when you would see a TV spot

and then they would scoop it, this has that look.

Hmm, mm-hmm.

This has a really pleasant flavor.

True vanilla flavor, kind of floral,

like maybe Tahitian or something like that.

Longer lasting flavor than the other ones.

The dairy feels, like, nice and rich.

It's got a great texture.

Velvety smooth on the tongue.

Sweetness level's perfect.

It's got some salt.

It's dynamic.

Definitely, this feels very premium.

It's really great, actually.

This might remind me of what I thought Häagen-Dazs

was supposed to be.

Ooh. Ah.

Adirondack, yes.

Delicious New York State local brand.

That's why it's called Adirondack

Cream, milk, sugar, non-fat dry milk,

egg yolks, and vanilla extract,

that's exactly what you want the label to say.

Special blends of vanilla beans

from Tahiti and Madagascar.

To me, Tahitian vanilla

is like a little more, like, brighter, lighter, floral.

Madagascar, it's a little more robust.

Really beautiful flavor.

Pretty tasty.

These guys are great.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] McConnell's R.R. Lochhead Vanilla Bean.

This is one of the most vanilla ice cream aesthetics

I've seen.

Lots of visible vanilla bean.

It looks very creamy.

No fake annatto look.

This is the best vanilla flavor we've had yet.

Whoever's making this is using actual vanilla beans.

Fat content's very high.

Very smooth

Texture's great.

I think it's the right amount of sweet.

This is a higher, if not finer tuned, ice cream.

Really lovely.

This is really good.

Oh, yeah. Oh.

McConnell's, you guys, I tell you, you did good.

R.R. Lochhead proprietary Madagascar vanilla beans.

R.R. Lochhead, this guy,

he's a vanilla guru from Madagascar.

They've differentiated their vanilla.

It ain't just Tahitian, it ain't just Madagascar.

You know, it's got that guy, the guru.

It's got the guru's name on it.

There's no stabilizer added to this other than the yolk,

which functions as a stabilizer in this case,

and the tapioca starch.

Tapioca starch is functioning as a stabilizer

to retain water, to like fix it in place and swell,

which is what fiber does.

It's less stretchy.

Literally just cuts and it melts at a good rate.

This is a top notch ice cream.

It's one of my favorites so far.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Tillamook Vanilla Bean.

It has a couple of specks here and there.

The color is pretty white,

so I'm gonna say there's no egg in here.

You kind of think immediately,

oh, this has like more milk than, like, butter fat.

That's a little like taffy.

It's nice.

It's a very, like, natural vanilla flavor,

which I really appreciate.

It's not super rich, but it has enough fat that it churns.

It has a really nice, smooth mouth feel.

Lighter by way of air.

Reminds me of the Halo Top.

Sweetness on this one is high.

I think the sweetener is not all sugar,

like, just cane sugar.

It doesn't have the things I like about ice cream.

Is it Tillamook?

Tillamook.

Tillamook is West Coast.

Made with extra cream.

Yep, cream is the first ingredient.

It's a strange concoction of dairy products and sugar.

[Orlando] Tara gum and guar gum.

Not such a terrible thing,

especially when ice cream is traveling.

A little stabilizer is a great insurance policy.

It's reading good.

Cream, skim milk, milk, sugar, egg yolks.

It's underwhelming.

It's so crazy to me

that it can have all the right ingredients

and just not the right proportions.

I really like it.

[tub thudding]

[Narrator] Favorite Day Homemade Vanilla.

It seems eggy.

Very buttery yellow.

Very pretty.

Is it yolks or are they fooling me with annatto?

Doesn't really have the vanilla thing going on.

I think vanilla extract.

It tastes rich.

It's very creamy.

There's no ice crystals.

It's custardy, good texture.

I think I'd eat past the flavor

and I really like the composition of the ice cream itself.

The sweetness is really good.

Pretty balanced.

It doesn't take much

just to add some vanilla to these things.

They really did, they do.

Favorite Day, I should have known.

This is Target store brand, okay.

Homemade vanilla flavored, yum, ice cream.

It's ice cream.

It's not a frozen dessert,

so that means it's got enough fat, which I can taste that.

It says homemade, but packaged laboratory experiment.

It has quite a bit of stuff here.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I can't read all this.

There's 900 ingredients in here.

This is impressive.

But a lot of them are repetitive, which is kind of weird.

This repeats water, like, five times.

First few ingredients are straightforward,

what we wanna see.

We've got milk, cream, sugar,

custard base, some preservatives.

This is the opposite of clean labeling.

That's insane.

I just can't imagine this factory's storage of ingredients.

Vanilla is not listed in the ingredients.

It just says natural flavor.

Well, how do you put homemade on this?

In what world does that even translate

to what this product is?

All that being said, it's a nice tasting vanilla.

They somehow ended up with a great texture,

which I'm blown away by.

[Narrator] Now let's see which ice creams

our experts liked the most and the least.

From a guy who owns an ice cream company,

I don't think I've ever eaten that much ice cream

in one sitting.

One of my favorite ice creams I tasted today

was McConnell's

'cause they had lingering both front

and floral vanilla flavor.

The texture, and the amount of vanilla bean,

and the quality of the dairy

was just above and beyond

Clean label, few ingredients.

That's the kind of ice cream that you can go back to

because it's not too sweet.

I loved the Adirondack vanilla ice cream.

That was French style, so it had the egg yolks in it.

[Orlando] There was very good vanilla flavor.

Super creamy.

Texturally, formulation was very well balanced.

I also really liked Jeni's.

Texturally, it was awesome.

The vanilla bean with the honey, I loved that.

I thought it was so interesting and smart

to use a different kind of sweetener in there

that has its own flavor profiles.

One of my favorite things about ice cream

is having that salt profile.

It was really creamy

and it had a beautiful richness to it.

At the end of the day,

Gini, just really conscious of the ingredients

she puts in her ice creams.

I also really like Van Leeuwen's vanilla ice cream.

This ice cream was rich-tasting, but not super fatty,

a very good vanilla, very good dairy profile, very clean.

As for the ice creams that I didn't enjoy as much,

I wasn't a big fan of Friendly's.

Too artificial flavoring and the texture was off for me.

It just didn't have enough fatty deliciousness in there.

I like to think of as like that necessary evil.

It's very nostalgic.

It is at a great price point

and it makes many, many, many people happy.

I just might not be one of those people.

The Halo Top kind of fell short for me as well.

I don't want anything that is, like, diety,

low calorie, low fat.

You know, I don't really wanna feel good about myself

when I'm eating ice cream.

I'm kind of fine with, you know, being in an empty bathtub,

maybe the shower running.

It just didn't have quite the right flavor or texture.

Those alternative sugars had an aftertaste

that I didn't really like.

I also wasn't a fan of Turkey Hill.

The vanilla disappeared, the texture was off,

and had too many gums going on.

As a pastry chef,

ice cream is one of my favorite things to make.

And I kind of think the simpler the better.

What you wanna do is to try to lean

towards few ingredients, cream first or milk first.

Look for ones that say ice cream

as opposed to frozen dessert,

because that's not technically ice cream.

But at the end of the day,

if you like it, then it's good ice cream to you.

But I feel like if you just take it home

and don't eat the whole thing,

you might as well throw it out.

It just sits there.

It's gonna get all freezer burned.

Eat it, it's a portion.

So this is me, an ice cream professional,

telling you that you can eat the entire pint of ice cream

in one sitting.